Introduction to Computer Science

MWF, 12:35-1:25, Crown 105

Texts: We will be using, primarily, the online Python tutorial http://anh.cs.luc.edu/python/hands-on/3.1/, by Dr Andrew Harrington. There is also a collection of example programs at anh.cs.luc.edu/python/hands-on/3.1/examples.zip.

The labs and projects will be worth about 30-35% of your grade, with the exams making up 65-70%. The final will be worth a little more than the first two exams. Your scores on the labs and projects will, for the major part, be used as "extra credit" to boost the grade you would have received based on exams alone.

The TA is Robert Kania.

In Comp 150 we will consider some of the following topics:

• Basics of programming (including analysis and design) in the Python language.
• Introduction to computer hardware and architecture.
• Introduction to computer networks and the Internet.

We will use Python 3.x (generally the most recent, but any 3.x version will do), and the Idle environment. We'll go over installation during the first week of class.

Some projects will require the graphics.py library. The installation instructions in this file are, in their entirety,

    INSTALLATION: Put this file somewhere where Python can see it.

The easiest approach is to copy the contents from the link above, open a new file in the same folder as your project, paste in the contents, and save it as graphics.py. Alternatively, you can figure out what system folder it can be placed in. The advantage of the latter approach is that if you create new Python project folders, you do not have to keep reinstalling graphics.py.

I was able to install graphics.py centrally using the following command (in a terminal window). This requires that the python installer "pip" was properly installed on your system:

    pip3 install graphics.py

You will also need the following line in each project file:

    from graphics import *

Notes

My general course groundrules are here.